Well, another Leadership Summit has come and gone at Willow Creek
Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois – a yearly conference led
by its senior pastor and Willow Creek Association’s Chairman of the
Board, Bill Hybels. They reportedly drew over 6000 attendees this year
with some 60,000 watching a live broadcast of the event. They’ve been
holding these annual gatherings for 13 years.

In a
recent Christian Post article, Hybels once again revealed the humanist
nature of the infamous seeker-sensitive church growth movement by posing
the question:

"Do we still believe the local church is the hope of the world?"

You
see, many Christians might look at that and not realize they’ve been
subjected to a dialectic question designed to alter their spiritual
priorities and get them onboard an alternative agenda. This is what
trained facilitators do under the radar in many churches today.

There are a lot of misguided Christians today who have a misplaced faith
and hope in their church. This makes them easy targets for church growth
consultants who know all too well how to play on the egos, ambitions and
insecurities of both laymen and staff wanting their church to be bigger
and better than the one across town.

When
we covet the “success” of others, we make ourselves vulnerable to
smooth-talking opportunists who will gladly step in and exploit our
weaknesses and shortcomings upon invitation. The result is that we end
up depending on them and their programs, techniques, strategies and
surveys instead of God and His Word.

But
the Church cannot save.

The
Church is the saved.

Did
the members of your local congregation live perfect lives, heal the
sick, raise the dead and die on a cross for your sins and mine and then
rise from the grave three days later? Did they also ascend into Heaven
and sit at the right hand of God the Father to make intercession for you
and me there?

Does
John 3:16 read: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Church, that whosoever believeth in them
should not perish, but have everlasting life?”

If
not, then, why should you and I rest our hope in a local church –
especially in the compromised, corrupt and declining state that many of
them now find themselves? If you haven’t been keeping up – more folks
are leaving churches now than are joining. That tells me they aren’t
finding much hope in them anymore.

With
one little question, Bill Hybels took his audience’s attention and focus
off of Jesus Christ – a lost world’s only real hope – and placed it on a
group of mere mortals calling them the “hope of the world.”

Shall we give honor, glory and praise to the Bridegroom or the bride?

Will
we follow the Good Shepherd or His sheep?

Am I
suggesting that the local church is no place for Christians?

Absolutely not!

They
are the Christians! Or at least they are supposed to be.

What
I am saying is that we need to stop putting our hope and faith in people
and their self-exalting, self-justifying, self-serving organizations and
institutions, local or otherwise. It’s time to start reading, learning,
obeying and proclaiming God’s Word – all of it – instead of snappy
slogans, corny clichés, vain visions and the silly strategies of men.

We
ought to be about seeking God’s face first and new faces for
our sanctuary second. It’s as if we believe manually growing our
congregation somehow enlarges our God. But that’s church worship, not
God worship! And if we declare our church, man-made or not, to be “the
hope of the world,” then we are little more than idolaters.

Jesus rebuked religious leaders for putting their hope in the Temple.
Are we any less guilty today for putting our hope in a religious
building’s inhabitants? If that isn’t humanism, I don’t know what is.

It
doesn’t surprise me that Bill Hybels believes that though. He’s in the
church business. He’s a salesman and that’s his product.

I
should also point out that according to Christian Today,
Saddleback Church’s Purpose Driven pastor, Rick Warren, is
currently writing a new book entitled: The Hope of the World.

Coincidence?

I
doubt it.

The
church growth movement, you see, worships a two-headed god called
“Results” and “Relationships” where nothing gets in the way of either –
even God’s Word. It was first encountered in the Garden of Eden.

The
religion of Results persuades us to, like Eve, take and eat of “the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil” even when the Lord says: “Thou shalt
not.” But we do anyway because we believe the end justifies the means –
and we’re convinced it’s for a “good cause.”

Today, many trained facilitators in leadership positions have
infiltrated the church and convinced gullible and covetous Christians
that if they rely on market principles and surveys, they’ll get the
Results they’re after – which may or may not have anything to do with
the Word and Will of God.

We
call that “pragmatism.”

God
calls it sin.

The
religion of Relationships teaches us to, like Adam, “hearken unto the
voice” of those we love rather than the One Who created them –
especially if it keeps the “unity of the body” – contrived and illicit
that unity may be. So, we take the experiential advice of well-meaning
friends, loved ones and associates and treat it as authoritative –
especially when it is what we want to hear – instead of praying, waiting
and laboring in the Word for wisdom and truth. In the end, God’s Will
is, at best, relegated to one of many opinions.

We
call that “consensus.”

God
calls it sin.

The
Christian Post went on to say that Hybels “encouraged leaders to
re-invent new strategies that would serve as self-replenishment.”

No
word yet on where he found that in scripture.

Doesn’t sound anything like the 23rd Psalm though – that old
strategy that says: “He restoreth my soul” and “leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness for his name's sake.”